Hi everyone,Sorry to do this to you but I need to try out one more alpha before we start the beta stage. We had multiple problems with the 3.6 release mostly due to an upgrade to the installers core system to accomodate the latest kernel releases. Hopefully the install will go without problems this time and I added a few updated packages like xscreensaver, grip to rip cd's/dvd's, and a few other core programs. Wicd, the network manager should work correctly now as well as the keytboard setting problems. I added a few new twists to the overall theme of things, interested to hear any reactions................ I know I have thrown a lot of releases at you lately but I would like the final stages to be pretty damn perfect so the betas rc's should be quick and painless. Thank you very much for taking the time to test............looking forward to your results..comments

The text-based installer still can't find the CD drive in either PC I tried out, but the GUI installer can. GParted now correctly makes the partitions and the installer can use them, a problem for me in 3.51. I don't get dumped into xterm any more and grub now works for me, previously I had to use lilo. So, apart from not finding the CD it's looking good.CheersAndy

Initial test: Booted from CD. Installer found both CD and ISO on drive. Installed from CD to /dev/sda2.

Issue 1: "unable to probe for other operating systems..." (I have VL6 installed on /dev/sda1 using XFS).Accepted the failsafe grub install. "Error: Failsafe ;31mlibhardware (EIDE) directory /proc/ide iesistente ! [37m/dev/sda".Reboot showed old LILO in place, but.. booted VL6, ran vliloconf. Did not find VL7. Mounted sda2 and made symlink vmlinuz in "boot", pointing to kernel. After that vliloconf did find it and added to menu. Upon reboot I got just a string of "9A's". Booted VL7 from CD, ran LILO install and now it all works fine.

Issue 2: Installer failed just after filling out information on regular user. After reboot no user created. Rest of config completed. Added user manually and now system is running okay.

﻿VectorLinux Core 7.0 Alpha 4 is worth the extra time! Vec no apologies necessary. You need to be proud of this release.From what I can see and as far as satisfying my needs, Vec and others involved have hit all the marks. Thank you all! What worked before is working now and I can see you all have worked hard to improve what needed improving. This new full-featured desktop really looks great. The desktop is certainly stylish and people coming from Windows or Apple will feel very comfortable with it. It is easy to see that Alpha-4 was carefully worked-out. It displays the kind of polish that really makes it shine. Among other out of the box treats the resolution was just right for my video card, flash worked and I was able to watch a DVD. I still remember when Nvidia drivers required me to kill X Windows and run a console script. Firefox was very,very sluggish. After running the updates and performing my usual tweaks Firefox it is still slow, but acceptable. I have used Vector pretty regularly for many years. Despite the occasional annoyance Vector has been solid and improves with each release. The best compliment I can give this release is that I'm running it now and will be using it every day. It now rests on the only partition to the hard drive of my main desktop. I am sure after trying it many others will do the same. You have once again outdone yourselves and in my mind, hold the title as one of the best new user distributions available. For the past few months I have routinely checked the forum and downloaded each release and tested it. I was worried that Vector had reached a pinnacle and would not be as active as in the past. I was wrong. With the release of Alpha-4 it is plain to see Vector is still strong and getting better, greater and faster than all of the previous versions. It's both difficult and time consuming to improve upon something that is already excellent. Thank you again for all your successful efforts and my early Christmas present. No one should be disappointed with the end result.

Couple notes on alpha 4. Will not work on my on laptop with Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01), graphics. Works on my other machines, but on on this one right after the "hold on tight testing X bit, it just goes to a black screen.

I've also noticed on any qt app that I install the text that appears on roll-overs (ie, mouse rolls over an item that generates some pop up text), is nearly invisible as text is a very light yellow on a white background.

also I get the following error when trying to run dvdstyler, which I had running just fine on the previous verison.

Fatal Error: Mismatch between the program and library build versions detected.The library used 2.8 (no debug,ANSI,compiler with C++ ABI 1002,wx containers,compatible with 2.6),and wxNet used 2.8 (no debug,Unicode,compiler with C++ ABI 1002,wx containers,compatible with 2.6).Abortedeven after re-building the wxGTK dependency on the new alpha, I still get the same error.

I've also noticed on any qt app that I install the text that appears on roll-overs (ie, mouse rolls over an item that generates some pop up text), is nearly invisible as text is a very light yellow on a white background.

See if this helps. Run qtconfig and on the first screen, under GUI Style select Desktop Settings (Default). By default, qtconfig seems to come up with GTK+ . Maybe this should be changed, devs?

I had the same problem with Scribus 1.3.9 and couldn't read the tooltips until I changed qtconfig to Desktop Settings. That fixed it right away. I hope it does for you, too.--GrannyGeek

I'm writing this from Opera in VL7 alpha4. Installation went smoothly. I had no problem creating a user during installation.

I can't get LILO to work. I want to install on a floppy disk but when I run LILO in VASM, I get this message:Cannot find kernel (vmlinuz). Aborting LILO install.

I'm booting with the installation CD. I see a vmlinuz-2.6.35.7 file in /boot but no symlinks as there are in /boot of my VL7 a3.5.1 partition. I may try to copy a couple of files from that partition to VL7 a4 but am a little scared to mess with it.

My glxgears scores are worse than they've been on any VectorLinux I've ever used. I have a Radeon 9200 card with 128 megs. I use the xorg radeon driver; ATI doesn't have an updated driver for this old card. I'll compare xorg with what's on my VL7 a3.5.1 partition and see if I can spot some differences.

I've installed a bunch of stuff (OpenOffice, SoftMaker Office, Tuxcards, among others) which seems to be working, though I haven't done much beyond starting them.--GrannyGeek

Looks better this time than the last alpha, uk keyboard up and running, no issues with not being able to start X. etc.

However some issues with downloading aps, for example

osmo: Depends: libgtkhtml >= 2.11.1-i586-1vl70 is an error message in Gslapt - this is on a clean install of alpha 4

After downloading and installing osmo I get the following error when run from a console lyn:$ osmoosmo: error while loading shared libraries: libgtkhtml-2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Running it now on a my Optiplex GX270 (2.8 Pentium 4). I have to boot from the CD (because I'm using an older version of Grub that can't work with 256 "something or others" in ext3 -- but that was expected). I got a kernel panic on the first boot, but afterward everything went fine and the error hasn't returned. [I'm sorry I didn't write it down.] Everything seems to be slick and fast on this machine. Cairo is kind of "iffy" at this point. The Graphics button brings up Inkscape, F-Spot and Gimp, but now doesn't open any of these. (At first it opened Gimp.) Firefox works fine from Cairo, as does the Terminal, Galculator, Pidgin, Show Desktop, Exaile and the volume setting -- though I had to go to the top panel to shut off "mute" on the sound. The weather applet is not working yet, but I chalk that up to my stupidity. I'm also having trouble getting the home folder to work. It comes up with "Open this folder" but it never opens. Also, I often have double images when I "zoom" on the button in Cairo. So, at least on my computer, Cairo still seems "not quite there."

Upgrade was quick and easy, now using Firefox 3.6.13. I like the cursor themes better than the other alpha I tried (Alpha 2, I think). I kind of like the background and login screen. Hulu ran well, even without proprietary nVidia drivers (unless they're now built in). [No, Hulu runs okay until I try full screen, so that's right for the "nv" driver as opposed to the proprietary nVidia driver.] So far sound has been good, video has been good. Pretty impressive for an alpha release. I'll have more comments after I've done some more testing. I'll probably have a computer available specifically for testing Vector Linux 7 soon. I like the fact that so much is looks and acts the same as Vector 6 -- even though it's a bit prettier. Once it's released and I move over to 7, I'll probably jettison Cairo, but I plan to keep and use it while testing. It looks like another great Vector release is coming up.

I figured out the "multiple images" in Cairo. Each time I logged out and back in, it appears that Cairo loaded another instance -- or maybe something else caused it. Four of them were open at once.

Thanks to everyone for your hard work.

I like the theme (light blue / gray), the simple and clean icon theme in Firefox, the new sound volume icon (I like the way it gets rid of the vertical bar) -- a lot of work has gone into making Vector Linux 7 look great. (Sorry to ramble here -- I just didn't want my first impression to seem negative.) I've tried all the music playing applications, everyone is working fine. Except for the few Cairo issues, I can't find much to report at all. I'm now looking forward to 7, and I'm not one who is always big on change. Again, great work. Thanks.

﻿Firefox was very,very sluggish. After running the updates and performing my usual tweaks Firefox it is still slow,

That's odd. I've seen no slow down at all compared to VL 6. Do you make network.dns.disableIPv6 true? I always do that and it gets rid of the hitches in Firefox. (I realize that, sooner or later, I won't be able to do that, but it works well now.)